GSoC 2020: Outliner Discussion and Suggestions

[Bobo_The_Imp]

Something I noticed, while looking at the outliner, is that when you have a mesh, it will have the Object Data icon in green beside it. When you add things like modifiers, constraints etc, the object data icon gets “pushed” to the right to make room for the incoming icons, like so:

I’m not sure if there is a reason for the current behavior, maybe there is a reason that object data always needs to appear last? If not, I think it would maybe feel cleaner if nothing jumped around. I think the other icons should come after the Object Data icon, like so:

This way doesn’t cause jumping, and makes it just a little bit more consistent on where to find the object mesh data icon in long lists.

[natecraddock]

Hi again all! A few of you reported bugs with properties syncing (still not sure the best name for that…). I just had a proof of concept implementation and skipped most of the types. Today I added every type I could possibly think of, including objects. I may have still skipped some obscure outliner item, so let me know if I missed something.

Also, I’ve committed fixes to master (2.90) to fix object and collection delete hierarchy (works in View Layer mode now!), and some selection cleanup.

@RobWu

What I mean by visible differences, is that atm in the Outliner/View Layer, there’s no good way to see what is what.

Thanks for the great overview of what could be improved.
One tricky case is duplicate linked. That just uses the same Mesh datablock for both objects. It might be possible to draw differently if the Mesh data has multiple users, but that would require backtracking in the outliner.

Externally linked collections should definitely get the “link” icon next to them. I’m not sure why they do not at the moment. It’s drawn for the child, but would be more useful for the parent. And about the properties editor, see the above

@slowk1d

-As I already wrote, I think that for truly benefit the syncing with material properties, the material icon should be exposed at the right of the object’s name and not only in the hierarchy

I’m still reviewing this with the UI team and others. If the column does not come back, would a right-click context menu entry be useful?

I agree, drawing the materials on the object would be great! I’ll add it to the todo.

@joro

One solution is to have a dedicated row of toggles displayed on a prominent place in the interface which act on the highlighted objects.

I haven’t seen a mockup like this before, but I like it! There might be room for improvement of course, but I do think this has potential. And it probably wouldn’t be as large of a change as you expect - just a new fixed row would be drawn with some buttons. I’ll look into this!

@Bobo_The_Imp

it might be nice to be able to press enter on the keyboard to jump to the pertinent panel as well.

I’m going to make some walk navigation changes soon. If those don’t fix it, (I’ll announce when I do make them of course), let me know.

@Bobo_The_Imp

If not, I think it would maybe feel cleaner if nothing jumped around. I think the other icons should come after the Object Data icon, like so:

Great idea. I’ll look into that too So many little papercuts here that would be nice to fix

[RobWu]

Hi Nate,

I made a additional proposal for you regarding Outliner visibility:

In this example, the linked (and its instanced) Collections are (maybe) colored differently and have a link icon at the root icon.

Any object or Collection ‘Linked Duplicate’ is shown in Italic.
An idea for the Mesh data is to show a number icon when it is used in more than one object.
Like as with a Collection showing the amount of objects in it when collapsed.
This could also be extended to a material icon, if that is showing in that list as well.

I feel this is already helping a lot regarding an visual overview of the data in the scene.
Hope this makes sense

rob

[jc4d]

The properties sync is awesome, finally the amount of clicks has been reduced for example.

One small thing (I hope) is the active icon regardless on what icon you click.

I expect to see the Camera Object Data Properties gets deselected if we select another object’s Data Properties. Is it possible?

Better a visual example:

I made a proposal at the very beginning of this thread asking if is possible to have all the object “tags” visible to avoid displaying the object’s hierarchy to select other data attached to the object?
Like this:

https://devtalk.blender.org/t/gsoc-2020-outliner-discussion-and-suggestions/13178/4

[RonanDucluzeau]

Can the left column of data activation managing opening/closing of modifiers in Properties Editor ?

Can displaying modifiers tab by a click or Ctrl Tab shortcut in Properties Editor change display filtering in Outliner ?
Passing Object State Filter to Active, could help to manage modifiers through outliner’s list.

[d-V-b]

The outliner in my opinion should be a place to easily manage large scenes. There are things that irritate me…

Context menu:

1. Multiple objects selected - clicking new collection should ad those objects to collection…
2. Deleting parent - should also by default delete children, and not throw them in the main collection… A secondary option could be to “dissolve” the parent leaving children. Should apply both to collections and parented objects.
3. There should be a possibility to copy/paste modifiers/materials/etc from context menu in the outlier.
4. Materials/modifiers/vertex groups/etc should be managed from the outlier - enable/disable/show/hide/rearrange.
5. Linking objects between scenes could be more straightforward…

Drag and drop:

1. It should be possible to drag and drop materials/modifiers/etc between objects; with modifier keys copy/linking
2. The visual representation of drag and drop action is poor. It should be more obvious were the dropped object will go or if the if the action will succeed at all

Probably out of the scope:

1. We really need better grouping options.
2. Syncing with the modifier stack to display only the selected modifiers in the stack.

Question:
Is there an api to add options to the context menu from python?

[lsscpp]

Hi @natecraddock, I’m going to ask something particular. I understand that your work is about UX in the outliner, and what I ask is more of a “feature” kind. But maybe it can be something like a “fake” Blender feature, obtained just via outliner UI. I’ll explain.
Many people want Collections to behave like “super-objects”, as in you can assign a modifier to them and it will propagate to all the objects inside the hierarchy. Maybe this is too much. There will be problems with many objects, different types etc…
But also many people ask for something easier: collections to behave like groups, so that you just select one element and the whole hierarchy gets selected (there’s also an addon that tries to achieve this, sending collections to a new scene, and porting back an instance). Now, I wonder if a simple outliner trick could do this. Collections should maybe have a “status” variable, that states if they are open or closed. Open would be like now, closed would be a sort of single block of objects. The collection icon would tell us if it is open or closed. When closed there’s no arrow on the left, you can’t roll down the contents: to do that you should open the collection. Tab on the outliner area would open/close the selected collection, as we are used to enter edit mode in te 3d viewport. Also an entry in the context menu would allow to open/close collections.
Sorry for bad explaining, it’s late, I’m tired…

[natecraddock]

@RobWu

I made a additional proposal for you regarding Outliner visibility:

Thanks for the continued mockups! Not everything here is possible, but I do like where this is going. The point is clear though, anything to make the outliner more organized will be a benefit.

@jc4d

I expect to see the Camera Object Data Properties gets deselected if we select another object’s Data Properties. Is it possible?

I made a proposal at the very beginning of this thread asking if is possible to have all the object “tags” visible to avoid displaying the object’s hierarchy to select other data attached to the object?

That active camera is the scene camera (the one used for the viewport & rendering). Object data cannot be active, that is why it doesn’t change.

Yes, more could easily be shown to the right in the outliner.

@RonanDucluzeau

Can displaying modifiers tab by a click or Ctrl Tab shortcut in Properties Editor change display filtering in Outliner ?

I’m not sure I understand all of your questions here. Do you mean that a ctrl+click in the modifier properties should filter the outliner to only show modifiers?

@d-V-b I agree with many of your points. Hopefully I can get around to lots of those small issues.

@lsscpp

Now, I wonder if a simple outliner trick could do this. Collections should maybe have a “status” variable,

This is possible, and I do understand. I’m not sure the outliner is the best place to solve this though.

[natecraddock]

Hi all, sorry about the quiet couple of days here…

Let’s talk about collection color tagging! I have it working well, and the only thing that remains is to pick a set of good colors, and decide exactly where to draw them!

You can get/set them from python bpy.data.collections['Collection'].color = 'ORANGE' and from the outliner right-click menu.

I have 7 colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and no color) currently, and adding more is trivial. I think 8-10 at a maximum is fine.

Here are the tests I have done

1

This one is subtle and out of the way. It is also very easy to implement. It is very close to the activation radio button though. We might remove the radio button later so this is still a good possibility.

2

My favorite at the moment. This has the same benefit as being subtle like drawing a bar to the left. It’s not as simple to code, but still works well. One flaw is that the icon is thin, and the colors do not show clearly.

3

This was suggested many times, and I tried it because it was easy. I’m really not a fan - it conflicts with the selection lines, and it makes the overall UI of Blender very very unbalanced.

4

A few others I tried; these have a few issues (not updating to the correct x-position always).

5

Coloring behind the collection icon is good, so long that we choose colors that have good contrast against the white/black. I really like this option as well.

In my branch I committed the colored icons version (#2) because it works well enough for now. Let me know what y’all think about the placement of the colors, and the colors themselves! I just picked colors that already existed in the default theme for now, so I haven’t spent much time to make them consistent in saturation/contrast.

[Bobo_The_Imp]

I think 3 is fairly atrocious haha! 2 Maybe looks a bit gaudy, kind of hard on the eyes I think. 4 is Acceptable, but I think that the checkboxes are an option in the outliner filter, so if you didn’t have it on then too bad so sad, which may not be very elegant (Though admittedly I like it). 5 Seems ok-ish, though it makes it really hard to see the active collection, which is troublesome. 1 Might be my favorite, it creates the least complications between icon/color interaction. The issue with it is that it might be a bit small, It would genuinely be nicer were it a little wider, but I don’t know if moving the icons over to make way for that is necessarily a good move.

TL;DR/My take of this is:
1 - is the best, though too small
2 - is hard on the eyes
3 - way to much
4 - Very nice, not unlike photoshop, but might be a problem since the checkbox icon is optional
5 - Pretty good, makes it hard to find the active collection icon

[lone_noel]

Cool stuff Overall I agree with Bobo_The_Imp. Though for me it’s more of a tie between 1 and 2.

One thing that is currently not adressed, is applying the colors to the items within the collections and how to deal with colored collections within colored collections. This is probably the biggest downside to 1 as it only allows for one color to be displayed.

What about this mock-up by SaintHaven in the blenderartist thread about collection colors (link to post):

It’s probably not as easy to implement, but I like that the color is applied to the entire hierarchy rather than just the collection itself. Working with scenes that contain a lot of objects the collection itself is often out of view so behaviour like this would be very handy.

Another thing about collections with a lot of objects: There’s currently no way to collapse a collection without having the collection in view. So I often find myself scrolling until the collection is in view just to collapse it, which can be a little tedious.

So here’s a more mock-up for colored collections I made based on the one above, but maybe it could address the collapsing as well, if pressing anywhere on the colored line would collapse the collection (similar to how reddit handles comment threads).

Though just having the arrow colored might be a little subtle when the collection is collapsed:

By the way, I’ve been working a bit with your branch and I’m loving the properties syncing. It feels pretty great and is such a time saver! Awesome work!

[Bobo_The_Imp]

Nice mockups! I didn’t think of items within the collection for highlighting. I hopped into Photoshop and noticed that if you group stuff and assign the group a color it does the same color for the contents. At first I thought this is pretty nice, but after some looking at it I’m not so sure. In Photoshop the text cannot be colored, just the eye icon, whereas in blender, we have an orange icon for the object, followed by a green one, then possibly others (blue, white etc). It’s a lot of color. So if you color the whole hierarchy it kind of sandwiches colors on the left and right quiet a bit. So I’m not sure if I’m sold on that concept, I think it might be enough just to denote the collection with color and not the hierarchy, for clarity.

@lone_noel

One thing that is currently not adressed, is applying the colors to the items within the collections

This is true, but I think since in example 1 the color indications don’t indent with the hierarchy, they are left justified, you can just just display another color below for the collection inside, only when you open up the top collection revealing the contents .

[silex]

Very nice @natecraddock! I also think that versions 1 and/or 2 are the way to go.

Regarding color choosing I think that the best way is to either make it random or leave it to the user.
Hardcoded number of colors might be limiting in big projects and personally I would avoid it, but if that is the only option, I’m ok with it.
Purple color of your choosing seems very low contrast from the background and might be hard to see on the screens in bright environment.

Personally I like the most first version posted above by @lone_noel. It’s very elegant, non intrusive and it highlights items inside collection very clearly.

[ckohl_art]

1 is my favorite. Hey, here’s a question… would a gradient be difficult? Here’s 1 again with the “bar” 1 pixel wider (4px) plus a gradient that fades to 0 alpha.

I kinda also like 2 but you’re right that the thin-ness of the icon is not ideal, and due to that thin-ness some colors are not going to look good on various interface themes (e.g. the purple has visibility issues on dark themes, and yellow probably would have visibility issues on light themes).

3 is pretty hideous and is not like the way I’ve seen layer colors done in any other DCC software I’ve used like Photoshop or Maya or Substance Painter.

4 probably has to be disqualified because the checkboxes can be toggled off in Filters.

5 is also pretty good but as already mentioned it has the drawback of potentially making it hard to know which collection is the active collection.

1, 4, or 5 are the most similar to other DCC software, but 4 and 5 have some not-small drawbacks.

I do rather like this mockup as it effectively combines 1 and 2 (and sort of 4). I think it’s valid to consider that the entire hierarchy should be denoted in color as well.

This could also be done with the little sliver of bar on the left of each row.

@silex

Regarding color choosing I think that the best way is to either make it random or leave it to the user.

I really wouldn’t want to have to type the color for every collection, that would be tedious, and I would never want it to be random. A quick set of preset colors is probably good for most users but only 7 to 10 total could be too limiting. Maya has 31 preset colors to choose from, for example.

I strongly agree on an option for custom user colors, however. Something like:
bpy.data.collections['Collections'].color = 'CUSTOM' and feed your own RGB/HSV.

Using Maya as an example again, if none of the 31 presets are to your liking (lol), you can do exactly that and enter your own color with the RGB/HSV color picker.

[RonanDucluzeau]

@natecraddock

I’m not sure I understand all of your questions here. Do you mean that a ctrl+click in the modifier properties should filter the outliner to only show modifiers?

A Ctrl click was not my idea, but you understood the principle.

Ctrl Tab/Ctrl Shift Tab are shortcuts to change active tab in Properties Editor.
So, user can display Modifiers Tab in Properties Editor by a click on button icon of tab or using Ctrl Tab shortcut.

So, what I meant is : Could it be possible to have an automatic filtering of outliner when Modifiers Tab, in Properties Editor, is activated/displayed ? Or a Modifiers Display mode in outliner ?

I am not saying that should be always the case. I thought that should be an option in Filter popup.
But if it is possible to make it work through a Ctrl click. Why not ?
That way, modifier’s list could be managed through Outliner by default, without need to enable Modifier’s list addon and without loosing vertical space because of list in Properties Editor.
Something like that.

Synchronization with Properties Editor is currently following one direction.
Order from Outliner -> Execution in Properties Editor.
Is it possible to have some orders following the opposite direction ?
Orders from Properties Editor -> Execution in Outliner.
Activating Modifiers Tab would change Outliner to a Modifiers display mode.
Activating Scene Tab would change Outliner to Scenes display mode.
Activating View Layers Tab would change Outliner to View Layers display mode.

I suppose that would force to find a way to define a main Properties Editor, in case, Layout contains several Properties Editor.

About collection color tagging, I like test 2.
I think that 1 is too thin to be noticeable.
I agree that SaintHaven’s mockup looks better with colored checkbox and hierarchy lines.
If it is problematic for some reason, maybe you could attempt a mix of 1,4 and 2 or 1,4 and 5.
Result should be more noticeable and contrasted without being as atrocious as 3.

About choice of colors, I think the best option would be to let it to user through Collection panel in Properties Editor.
That would be great to have a Collection Color used everywhere in UI.
Same Color in Outliner, in 3D Viewport, in Node Editor for simulations.

[dan2]

#2 looks pretty cool to me.

Can’t wait to have this feature, such a nice upgrade.

[joro]

for a long time I had some ideas of reorganizing blenders interface (started this mockup back in the beginning of 2019). I will try to lay out the basics of my thoughts.
there are several ideas implemented in the video. The most relevant are listed below.
You can also check out a clickable mockup of the proposal:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/24fc3cc8-089d-4d5a-74a7-29f91c755b35-52cd/?fullscreen

Please excuse the mouse pantomime

1. Can we have the outliner modes layed out similar to the properties tabs. Most of the time these two editors work side by side, so we can use the same visual language for both of them. Functionally I think it works fine, and it enables easy switching for the different modes. Right now they are hidden in a drop-down menu and I think a lot of people do not realize they exist.
   I know I don’t use them as often as I should simply because I forget about them.
   It could work like in the picture below.
   
   
2. Contextualization… Outliner and properties editors work on the same data and there are plans for synchronizing the selection across editors. right now however they do not filter the content of the editor for the current selection. This is more easily seen in the properties editor where you have tabs for the scene, rendering, world, output and selection all the time. This can easily be avoided by adding the scene as root in the outlines (so you can select it). We can only show the global tabs when you have a scene selected in the outlines. when you have a specific object active you show the tabs specific to its data type. Also when nothing is selected the root is selected and we show the global tabs (rendering, output, scene, render layers, world).
   
   
3. Compact view (maybe too radical for the current blender state…) When we need to use all the functionality of the editors, but we need the space for the viewport, when the width of a column of editors is too small we can collapse all the content and only show the gliphs. the content can be easily reached by a popup. This is implemented in Modo and is very useful for small screens and minimal layouts.
   
   

[RonanDucluzeau]

+1 for vertical tabs for Display modes.

[MeshVoid]

That compact view for outliner and property tabs is a great idea!

[So3Datel]

If the collections will have colors, then objects in the 3D viewport should also be painted in the same colors with Saturation and Value variation.
For examples, greenish objects are collection 1, reddish objects are collection 2, etc.
Also switching the viewport shading to the colors of the collections in the Viewport Shading overlays.